


Dancing For Your Dinner

by InkDrawnDreamer



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Dancing, Gen, Homesickness, Implied abuse, Mother/Son Bonding, Oneshot, Outlast: Whistleblower, Some Swearing, this takes place before Eddie's sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8974789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkDrawnDreamer/pseuds/InkDrawnDreamer
Summary: Eddie has a flashback to one of the few good moments of his childhood: dancing in the kitchen with his mother.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually pretty old, but I dug it up recently and figured that I might as well put it out there. Hope you enjoy!

I didn't lie down on the bed so much as fall into it. I couldn't bring myself to care. I was tired. I was sick of this place, sick of all those ingrates—those _sluts_ —using me and leading me on. I wished I could say it was just an effect of being here, but honestly, I couldn't remember a time when this was not the case. I opened my heart, willing to give my love to whoever would take it, but no, they were _all_ too good for me weren't they? Women, I swear. All slander but no standards.

"Oh well," I mumbled into the paper-thin sheets. Maybe some sleep would clear the muck from my head. 

Thankfully, the world did not take long to disappear.

When I woke up again, however, I instead found myself swaddled in one of my grandmother's thick quilts. There was gold light coming in through the windows, so it must have been late in the afternoon. My father was still at work, thank God. I didn't want to get up yet, but my gurgling stomach said otherwise, so I headed for the kitchen. I could smell onions from across the house, warm and savory, beckoning me closer. The radio on the windowsill was playing some old song I'd heard before, and my mother was humming along to it in harmony.   

I absolutely adored my mother. She was tall for a woman, and frail-looking, but I had always thought she was beautiful. Today, she had her hair piled up in a bun, a few black strands escaping here and there. She wore her favorite house dress under her apron, a thin yellow thing, worn and well-loved, printed with tiny flowers. 

She was still singing under her breath when I stepped into the kitchen. "Mommy?"

She shrieked. "Oh, oh Eddie." She turned around and let out a heavy breath. "Goodness, darling, you scared me."

"I'm sorry."

"No, no, don't be!" She knelt down in front of me. "I'm sorry I startled you. Did you have a nice nap dear?"

I nodded. She smiled—she had such a lovely smile—only to quickly frown again.

"Goodness, your button snapped off again?" She lifted up the hanging strap of my overalls. "Well, I can mend it after dinner, I suppose."

"S-sorry." I mumbled.

She looked up at me with a sweet look, then kissed my cheek. "Not to worry darling."

She rose to her feet and turned her attention back to the pot on the stove. "Do you want to help me with dinner?"

"Uh-huh."

"Alright, could you wash those potatoes in the sink for me then, honey?"

"Okay." I was too short to reach the sink faucet, so I pulled up a chair to stand on instead. I held the potatoes under the water, carefully scraping out the eyes with a knife, just like my mother would. I liked helping her make dinner. It was one of the few times when she wasn't so jumpy. She was a different person when my father was around. She certainly never sang around him. 

"I first heard this song when I was your age," she said.

"Uh-huh?"

"Mm-hm." She nodded. "I heard it when I was living with your grandmother. She liked it so much that she was tapping her foot and singing along. Pretty soon she was dancing around the room." She twirled around for emphasis. "Then you know what she did?"

"Nuh-uh." I started giggling as she picked me up off the chair, holding me under my armpits. She spun around, setting me down gently on the ground. She held my hands up high over my head.

"She started twirling me around with her." There was that smile again. "I swear to you my feet never even touched the ground." 

She let go of one of my hands and spun me around with the other. I sidestepped around my chair and did the same to her, well, tried to anyway. I might as well have been an ant trying to keep up with a giant. She stepped in perfect tune to the music. I struggled to keep up, but if she minded, she never showed it. As far as we were concerned, we were the only two people in the world. My mother and I dancing in the kitchen, smiling, laughing together, it was so strange yet it felt so natural. In that moment, I wished the song on the radio could have gone on forever. 

Of course it couldn't. As the last note sounded, my mother lifted me up off the floor and spun around, holding me up in her thin arms. I felt as though I was flying, only to come in for a quick landing, squeezed against my mother's chest. 

"My boy," she murmured, softly but sadly. I was so close that I could smell the baby powder she wore behind her ears. "My beautiful baby boy."

I felt her hand on my cheek, her upturned lips against my forehead. 

"I love you Mom," I said, and I meant it. I did not think I had ever adored her as much as I did in that moment.

I pulled away and looked at her face, smiling so hard that she seemed to do it with her entire being. I couldn't help but laugh, nearly whistling through the gap in the my teeth, and hearing the odd sound, she laughed too. For a few beautiful seconds, we seemed perfect and as God intended. But alas, all good things must end, as our moment did when we heard the creak of the front door. My father was home already?

Our smiles grew dull then. Mother went to go let him in proper, but she still gave me a last warm look before she did. I peered over the windowsill. Father didn't like us keeping the radio on. I scaled the chair I had butted up against the sink, but I could not quite reach. My smaller, newer fingers just barely brushed the dial enough to kill the music.

The sudden silence was what woke me up. I blinked awake, for real this time, getting an eyeful of the dismal gray ceiling. The warm kitchen had disappeared. Like the story goes, the clock had struck and so the fairy tale was over, replaced once again by grim, spiteful reality. I wasn't sure why I even bothered to be disappointed anymore. Life had never been all that peachy, even when I was a child. But I supposed things were somewhat better off. I did my damnedest not to think about where my mother was now, or what she must have thought of her darling Eddie now that he was cooped up in some nuthouse, surrounded by filth. 

I tried humming the song from the radio as best I could remember. It did make me feel slightly better, but only just so. That small comfort only served to make me homesick for my mother. I missed her so much. Truly, she had been the only woman to ever understand or accept me. I would make a far better husband and father than Dear Old Dad ever was, but there was no way on earth I could find a girl to match the woman who married him. The most I could do was dream. 

I let me head fall against the dirty mattress again, and tried to ignore the shouts and screams outside as I drifted back to sleep. If I was lucky, maybe I could drift back into the kitchen too. 


End file.
